International consultant in facilitating video storytelling for change

Wednesday, July 6, 2016

Why is something working? Or not working? Qualitative Comparative Analysis as an evaluation tool provides some useful insights in the combination of factors

How to explain why certain media products
(television, radio, printed media, internet, social media) trigger an answer
from powerful actors, and why do others not? This was the key question Valérie Pattyn , University Professor at the
University of Leiden applied, when she conducted a Qualitative Evaluation for
the Hivos Media Program in Kenya and Tanzania. The goal of this program was to
increase the accountability of the government and the powerful actors. The assumption behind the intervention logic
was that, if you strengthen investigative journalism, the accountability will
be increased. The program intervention was focused at financing critical
investigative journalism and providing mentoring programs by coaching and
learning by doing to journalists in Kenya and Tanzania.

Valérie Pattyn

Which factors have an influencing role on the
outcomes of the program and which others don’t? Valérie Pattyn applied for her
research, the Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). QCA is a social science research
method that applies
a systematic comparison to case studies. QCA helps to explore why some
interventions were successful in achieving a particular outcome while others
were not. The evaluation was focused at
generating qualitative information and not at quantitative information, since
the intention was to generate explanations why something worked or not
worked. Valérie’s presentation was held
and organized by Rutgers (knowledge centre for sexuality) in
partnership with the Learning Community Evaluation of Nedworc.
The meeting was visited by M & E officers from the Strategic
Partnership Partners - Dialogue and
Dissent and monitoring & evaluation experts from Nedworc.

visitors

Comparing successful versus unsuccessful cases
and data collection

The set-up
of the evaluation process consisted of 4 steps;

1.Design
of the evaluation;

2.Data
collection;

3.Data
analysis

4.Interpretation
of the findings

In the
design stage a number of successful and unsuccessful cases were selected by the
multi-disciplinary evaluation team. The condition for selection was to select
cases, which had not been influenced by extraordinary contextual factors. So
the case studies needed to be comparable, knowing that the conditions in which
the media products were applied were similar.
In this case it was decided to do a separate analysis of both the Kenya
and the Tanzania case studies, since the political context, educational and
media environment in both countries were significant different. Conditions under QCA means, which media
products do generate respons from citizens and under which conditions do media
products not generate respons. With QCA
you can investigate (combination of) conditions (factors) which are necessary
and/ or sufficient to accomplish desirable outcomes.

This stage
was followed by a regional workshop, where during a systematic discussion
stakeholders had the opportunity to give constructive input on the conditions
that were proposed by the evaluation team. Usually in this stage a shortlist is
made between the 3 – 6 conditions, that need to be evaluated. In this stage, it
was decided to link conditions to the journalist and the media product.

Conditions linked to
the media product

The data
collection was done by an extensive survey and some complementary interviews to
collect additional narrative information. Some of the interviews were done
anonymously since some of the informants wanted to keep their confidentiality. One part
of the data collection was to calibrate the data by coding them between 0 and
1.

Example Salience of a
media item

Identifying combination of factors that lead to
success

During the
data-analysis phase the evaluation team identified the combination of conditions,
that were sufficient for the outcome of the project (actor response) and the
conditions that were necessary for the actor response.

During this
phase specific software was used to transfer all the collected data in the ‘Truth Table’. This was done by coding the data from the
case studies into a 0 or a 1, based on
the conditions that were calibrated in the data collection phase.

truth table

Paths that
both generate success in one case study and failure in another case study, are
eliminated in this phase. These are called the the contradictory paths.
Finally, based on the processing of the data, the research identified 7 paths
of combinations of factors that led to a high response of citizens.

The QCA
intervention was finalized with the phase of interpretation of the paths, that
led to success. This is the stage were meaning was given to the different
paths. It is the stage were interaction with the stakeholders is required to
identify and explain the causalities between the different factors that led to
success.

For
example, in this evaluation it was found that the Journalistic experience
(seniority) played a major role in the
ABSENCE of actor response. This finding
generated a lot of questions that needed further discussion and analysis. Is “Experience not equal to journalistic
talent” or do “experienced journalists” feel themselves to mature to be
influenced by mentor advice offered by the program’? So this is the final stage where underlying
meaning is generated by discussion, involving the stakeholders.

Challenges and lessons

Based on
the experience gained from this research in Kenya and Tanzania, the team
encountered the following challenges and obtained the following lessons;

·The
data collection was a tremendous and a challenging job. The difference in quality of data, absence of essential data and the translation
of the huge amount of data to summarized data provided the evaluation team a
lot of work. The objectivity of data was also a dilemma. Some factors, such as education level or
geographical outreach, were not 100 % objective. Also the heterogeneity of the
case studies, made it a challenge to find common criteria for calibration.

·QCA
demands more than a regular evaluation process. It requires a lot of systematic
and thorough work. The method has a
danger, that if the evaluation is not well prepared stakeholders will get
participation fatigue. Therefore, it is recommended that this evaluation is
combined with other methods such a process tracing of typical cases
studies. Two weeks,
which is the timetable for most external evaluation interventions is too short
for conducting the QCA. The method
requires a wider time span and enough financial resources for the
implementation, especially for the design and data collection phase. For this evaluation the time span for
completing the research took twelve months.

·QCA
can be applied with a limited number of cases studies, however you still need
to select qualifiable cases studies from a medium sized project. So in this research from the 200 case
studies, 60 were selected for further
research.

·QCA
is a method which is still under development and in an experimental phase. The
number of cases where QCA has been applied are still limited and therefore,
best practices are needed to get a better idea where the method can have most
benefit and potential.

·For
the donor, the results were still puzzling. What to do with the
pattern-findings? More time had to be allocated for the joint-sense making
after the analysis.

·It
is difficult to have people to talk about cases that are negative; There were
the outcome is absent, it is essential for this method that data is found why
something did not work.

Added value and the potential of QCA

Although
QCA is a method in development, it has some great potential for further
application. The method generates causalities in programs which take place in a
complex environment. The method helps to explain why certain combinations of factors
work and why they not work. This generates a great potential for learning and
evaluation. The QCA is based on
evaluating existing programs by comparing cases, that have been generated by
the specific intervention. The method is accessible and transparent. You can
consult and download the procedures and software at the website of COMPASSS. http://www.compasss.org/ .
Another interesting publication you can read is an evaluation about
violence against women and girls, where a combination of QCA and process
tracing was used. This evaluation implemented by DFID won at the EES Conference
the best poster award. >>>> Read report.
The instructions manual for conducting a QCA is available
>>>> Handout QCA.

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Simon Koolwijk

Welcome!

I am an international consultant, specialised in building capacities of organisations and people. I worked for 3 1/2 years in Kenya, and since 1997 I have my own consultancy guiding international development projects over more than 20 countries. I am a Certified Professional Facilitator through IAF.Through this weblog I would like to share my experiences and keep you updated what keeps me busy at the moment. And in case you like to share and exchange, you are welcome to join!Hereby view my profile!